Make a SEARCH option to search our OWN tree for a specific name, rather than having to search the wh

LegacyUser

Tracy Lynn Keeney said: PLEASE, please oh pretty please make a way for users to search their OWN tree, and not the whole database! Very often there are names that I KNOW are on MY tree that I have entered, but I can't find them because I don't remember WHERE they are on my tree. Currently, a search searches all of FamilySearch.
When I click on "Tree" It shows MY tree and gives me the option to select "portrait", "landscape", "Fan Chart" or "Descendancy". To the left of that, is a "Home" button, a "recenter" button, a "full screen" button, and the option to zoom in and zoom out. What I need more than anything is a "SEARCH" button that I can click on, where I can type a name and the system will find that name on my tree so I can GET to it easily. Ancestry has this option, but I need it on FamilySearch!
The FamilySearch tree automatically load your DIRECT Ancestry, but very often I'm trying to find someone who isn't in the direct line, and I don't remember who's child they were, who their parent was, etc. I can't spend hours and hours clicking through every possible relation trying to find that person. And typing in their name in the "Search" or "find" button searches ALL of FamilySearch and sometimes gives pages and pages and pages of results. PLEASE make a search option that allows people to find someone on their OWN tree.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: If this is the FamilySearch FamilyTree (FSFT) you are talking about, then there is no "my tree". The FSFT is a global, open-edit tree for all humanity. No one "owns" any profile.

But I think your suggestion about being able to search only those profiles directly related to you is a good one.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: If you go and select the "Find" item while viewing the pedigrees (or other pages, it shows up in many places):



You will get the following window that will allow you to search the Single Large FamilyTree for records:



Be aware that it can be confusing when you go looking for records. In general, a "Search" will hunt through historic records, and a "Find" will hunt through the big FamilySearch FamilyTree for records that have already been added to it.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: As A Ven Helsdingen pointed out already, nobody on Family search has their "own" tree. There is only 1 large tree with almost 1.2 billion names in it that is owned by FS. All patrons are allowed to work in that tree making corrections and improvements to it, but per site policies, once you make changes to the tree, those changes belong to FS and as such, can be further improved on by anyone else on the site.

LegacyUser

Michael W. McCormick, AG® said: What everyone else said is true and those are important things to understand, but it does not mean your idea is impossible or undesirable.

FamilySearch has the technology to walk up X number of generations from a person in the tree such as yourself, and down Y number of generations, and return that to show various things. That same ability could feasibly be used to provide a search filter on the FIND page or elsewhere to limit a search to people within a certain generational distance. You are not alone in wanting a feature like this. I personally find that responses here are often centered around why an idea is a bad idea or why it wont work, but did you know you can share your idea directly with Ron Tanner who oversees the development roadmap for FamilySearch Family Tree? Here is a link to his Facebook page where he has a form where you can submit things to him that he will address in his Facebook live videos that he does: https://www.facebook.com/familyhistor...

LegacyUser

jen beckemeier said: I ́d love this search option too. I cannot remember who belongs to whom especially when going back further than 4th generation.
Sometimes while trawling unindexed registers, I find a source and need to check whether it ́s been added to my ancestor but don ́t know where to find him/her. The name is familiar but that ́s all. If I had a one click option to find them, I could check and add immediately, if necessary

LegacyUser

Ken G Moyer said: I'll add my support that idea. Many times I run across a name that I remember as family but can't remember which branch that he/she/them reside on.
Thanks for bringing this good idea up
Ken G Moyer

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: First, welcome to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

I like the idea of being able to search only your own ancestral lines... but there is a solution to the fact that FamilySearch does not now support such a filtered search: maintaining your own local copy of your ancestral lines and their descendants.

There are three fully-certified programs (Ancestral Quest, Legacy, and Roots Magic) that have free versions in the Solutions Gallery (link at the bottom of this and most FamilySearch pages) that allows you to download your ancestors and their descendants. Given the size of the tree, it can take a lot of time to do that, but once done, then you'll have a local database from which you can work if not connected to the internet. In addition, you will better be able to work with living relatives in your local database. For many people, the free version is sufficient. For those wanting more flexibility in reports and capabilities, the paid versions add a lot of power.

Each of the three have their own fans. My personal favorite is Ancestral Quest because it is basically an advanced version of the old free PAF (Personal Ancestral File) program that was once offered by the Church. The look and feel is similar. For Church members, all three offer ordinance reservation and tracking capabilities. It is my understanding that besides FamilySearch, Roots Magic also offers an interface with Ancestry trees. I'm in hopes that one day, Ancestral Quest will also offer that capability.

As to when FamilySearch may offer the filtering capability -- we don't know. A lot depends upon how such a feature would be prioritized and resolving any existing problems that prevents its easy implementation. Another consideration is the amount of processing power required and how many users of the feature it could support before becoming badly bogged down. Likewise, FamilySearch has limited resources when it comes to the development teams, so one can hope, but should not hold their breath.

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: Are you aware of the recents tab? I can put names into there to help me find them or if I have touched them recently they are on the list there. I too use my offline software Roots Magic or that very search box on Ancestry to help me find my relative on Familysearch. It is a helpful.

BUT I do not know how you would find "your" person any better in FSFT as maybe 1000s of people have the same name as the person you want to find. Entering the parameters you know with dates and locations can help you locate them. How would they(Familysearch) make a search to narrow down to someone you have seen or touched before? That is the recents tab as far as I know. It is a BIG tree you are searching.

LegacyUser

Barbara Nelson said: This is a feature I have often wished for. The way I envision it working is to start with a PID I input, and then follow the descendant chains down until the system found someone matching on name, location, approx dates, etc.

It would narrow the search results significantly if it only produced results that were descendants of the named PID.

'Recents' is helpful, but not if you are trying to find a name from a while back.

I can see where that could be system intensive, but it sure would be nice.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: The other important thing about a local copy is that it gives you a backup in the event that someone edits your FSFT relatives in such a way that you can't tell what the original was - you only know that what's there is wrong.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Setting the "my" tree thing aside... To find "my" relatives of a specific name in FSFT, I use the Watch List. Unlike the Recents list, it doesn't time out or get cluttered with profiles that I just happened to look at.

Sure, you need to spend some time setting it up, but you'll be there a lot earlier than any FS coding changes.

Once you have your list set up, then you can filter it by name and get the profiles from your Watch List that match the filter. And of course, you get a warning if someone changes your relatives' data. Usually.

I think that we need to bear in mind that no simple search method is going to help if we have too many people of the same name - if we start running into that problem then the results from the Watch list might need to be expanded to show extra data - the question is what?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Here's another way to do it. Anytime I am online working in the FSFT, I have my AQ database open in another window. Since any of my relatives that I have researched are not only in my AQ database, but they are also linked to their record in the FSFT. In order to quickly find someone, I first go to the Name List in AQ:



I simply select the person I'm interested in, and then click on the "FamilySearch--View Person in FamilySearch" menu item, and that person's page in FamilySearch will be immediately opened in a new tab in my browser window. I can sort on any of the fields shown in the example in order to find people. I can also add any number of new fields that I want. For example, I can sort on the "Living" field to get a list of everyone that I have in my private space on FS.

I can even sort on the names of cemeteries to show everyone in the same cemetery grouped together.

On top of that I have very flexible search capabilities. In the following example I can generate a list of All Descendants that are Related to Thomas Oscar Santee:



You can define search groups that will take all ancestors of the person you select back X generations and then forward Y generations. When you have that list, you can then apply a filter to all of the fields for any of those persons using the field selection filter:



The capability is so powerful and FAST, that in general I NEVER do any searches in the FSFT for any of the people that I've done work on. The only time I do is obviously for new people I'm interested in that are not already in MY OWN PERSONAL TREE in my AQ database.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Although not supported in FS at this time, you DO have this capability if you use a third party tool. See my Reply below.

LegacyUser

Brian Jensen said: This is a feature request that we frequently get, and we agree it would be very helpful. But with 1+ billion records in Family Tree we’ve not been able to come up with a performant design for this feature. Yet!

Thanks,
Brian Jensen
Search Engineering Manager